This article examines Plutarch's reception in George Pisides’ poetry. The first section argues in favour of Pisides’ familiarity with Plutarch's writings, mainly in view of verbatim quotations and other thematic connections or allusions. The second section explores Pisides’ more creative use of Plutarch by discussing his direct addresses to the Chearonean philosopher and comparing them with Pisides’ similar apostrophes to Homer and Demosthenes in The Persian Expedition and the Heraclias. By seeking to ‘rewrite’ the heroic past, Pisides presents himself as a skilled emulator of his ancient predecessors, thereby enhancing his self-fashioning as the imperial spokesman par excellence.

It is argued that Theophanes the Confessor derives his information concerning the name of the baths where Constans II was allegedly assassinated from Theophilus of Edessa. It is further argued that Theophilus’ claim that Andrew deliberately killed Constans by hitting him with a bucket is rather unconvincing and may represent the hypothetical reconstruction of the event by an imperial administration that could not accept that the emperor had died as a result of an unfortunate accident.

Utilizing the information recorded in the mid-tenth century Byzantine document known as De Ceremoniis, this paper will examine labour requirements for armament production in the context of a naval expedition to Crete launched by the Byzantines in AD 949. A series of interviews was conducted with experienced blacksmiths with the intention of exploring time requirements for equipment manufacture. The information provided by the De Ceremoniis, as well as that produced through the interviews, has allowed for the assessment of overall trends in the tenth century arms production industry, including labour investments, thematic and imperial production capabilities, and transportation logistics.

Magical objects play an important role in the fourteenth-century Byzantine vernacular romance Kallimachos and Chrysorroi, not due to their supernatural powers, but rather in order to make the chivalric status of the romance hero stand out, inasmuch as he does not resort to any of them to achieve his goals.

The Last Judgment, the extraordinary conclusion to Christ's parousia, played a consequential role in Byzantine religious culture. However, the scarcity of biblical information and the lack of an official council-sanctioned theology of the afterlife resulted in the creation of varying and sometimes contradictory narratives. The most systematic treatment of questions pertaining to the Last Judgment is by Joseph Bryennios (d. c. 1430/1), a theologian and court preacher, in a series of two sermons. This paper offers a detailed investigation of Bryennios’ eschatological thought and discusses its sources and its importance as ‘official’ theology in the last decades of the empire.

This article discusses the authorship of the ‘Short mournful story concerning the unjust death of the most honorable Constantine Cantacuzenus’, a poem that describes the execution of the grand postelnic on the orders of Gregory Ghika, the Prince of Wallachia. On the basis of a marginal comment in a manuscript authored by Nicholas Karatzas (Princeton gr. 112), this article argues that the questionable authorship of the poem may be attributed to the Ottoman grand dragoman Panagiotis Nikousios, who may have written the original Greek version published in Venice in 1666.

This article examines the different editions of Dido Sotiriou's first novel Οι νɛκροί πɛριμένουν, whose first edition was published in 1959 and the definitive edition, one hundred pages shorter, in 1971, when the military junta ruled Greece and strict censorship was being exercised. The first edition depicts details of the resistance movement against the Axis powers, whereas this has been cut from the definitive edition, which ends just as Greece enters the war against Italy. It will be argued that the revisions, on the one hand, address criticisms of the first edition, in an attempt to improve the novel. On the other hand, the omission of descriptions of resistance against a tyrant (something the colonels resented, for fear of comparisons being drawn to their regime) and the shifting depiction of identities of two main characters, from one that is stable (1959 edition) to one that is subtly performative (1971 edition), also inform discussions of censorship and identity during the years of the military regime.

Between the years 2000 and 2015 novels on the Greek civil war (1946–9) flooded the Greek literary market. This raises important questions as to why the burden of the civil conflict weighs heavily upon generations with no experiential connection to these events. This article begins by offering an interpretation for the literary upsurge of the civil war since the 2000s. Then it uses Marianne Hirsch's concept of postmemory to illustrate the authors’ ethical commitment to ‘unsilence’ and redress the past through the use of archival evidence and testimonies. The case studies of ThomasSkassis’Ελληνικόσταυρόλɛξο (2000), Nikos Davvetas’ Λɛυκή πɛτσέτα στορινγκ (2006),and SophiaNikolaidou's Χορɛύουνοιɛλέφαντɛς(2012) serve to illustrate my argument.

Unlike many of his contemporary Westerners, Liudprand of Cremona was proficient in Greek. His writings are full of Greek words and expressions, both written in Greek letters and transliterated into Latin. This note discusses an apparently corrupt passage in Liudprand's narrative of his embassy to Constantinople in 968, the Relatio de legatione Constantinopolitana, and reviews conjectures proposed by editors of the text. A non-invasive solution to the problem is presented that takes both the textual tradition of the Relatio and Liudprand's use of Greek into account.

The anniversary of Ruth's death and the funeral at St Andrews has just passed, reminding me how much I miss her and how profoundly she is admired by many medievalists, not just those specializing in Byzantine Studies, for a wide range of exciting studies not often brought together.